


An Alien Stole My Fruit Snacks

by Emilia_Rowan



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Based on a random tumblr post, F/F, Fluff, High school science teacher Lena, Kara is still Supergirl
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-12
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-18 20:15:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29988264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emilia_Rowan/pseuds/Emilia_Rowan
Summary: When Lena attaches some gummy fruit snacks to her weather balloon as part of an experiment with her high school science class, she doesn’t expect the snacks to go missing at 90,000 feet. And she certainly doesn’t expect Supergirl to show up a month later to replace said fruit snacks and maybe possibly ask her on a date.
Relationships: Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor
Comments: 46
Kudos: 857





	An Alien Stole My Fruit Snacks

It was supposed to be a simple science experiment, one Lena had performed with her freshman earth and environmental science class every year for the past five years she had been teaching. Every year, as they began their unit on weather patterns and meteorology, she took her class to the parking lot of West National City Public High, and they sent a weather balloon with a small digital camera up into the sky. Every year, as a bit of a joke, she would attach a few packs of gummy fruit snacks for the kids to eat once the balloon was retrieved, so they could say they had eaten something from outerspace. Every year, a few hours after launch, she and her best friend Sam, the school’s math teacher, would drive to wherever the balloon’s GPS tracker signaled that it had landed, and retrieve the balloon and the attached camera. And every year she would edit the footage to highlight the most important parts and show it to her class while they ate their gummy snacks from space. After five years, she had the process down to a science— pun fully intended. In five years of doing this experiment, the most exciting thing on the footage was a closeup of a kestrel that had flown dangerously close to the balloon as it ascended.

But in the sixth year of the experiment, that all changed.

“Did you decide not to put fruit snacks on it this year?” Sam asked, inspecting the camera as Lena rolled up the parachute part of the rig.

“What? No, of course I did. That’s the kids’ favorite part,” Lena replied absentmindedly.

“Well they must’ve fallen off, because they’re not here,” Sam said, turning the camera over in her hands.

Lena froze, the loose fabric in her hands tumbling to the ground. “What?”

“No fruit snacks,” Sam repeated, holding the camera out for her to inspect.

“That’s impossible.” Lena stepped over the parachute to get a closer look. “I used half a roll of duct tape to attach them to the camera box. There’s no way they came off.”

“Well, there’s no tape either,” Sam pointed out, and sure enough, she was correct. The black box that housed the camera still had a sticky tape residue on the outside, but all of the tape Lena had painstakingly wrapped around it was gone, along with the fruit snacks.

“That’s… weird,” Lena commented, but even that word didn’t feel strong enough.

“Maybe once we watch the footage we’ll see what happened,” Sam told her.

She ended up on Sam’s sofa an hour later, downloading the footage onto her laptop. Normally she did this on her own, but her friend was curious. Once Sam’s daughter Ruby was in bed, and Sam had popped a bag of popcorn, they sat shoulder to shoulder and began watching the footage— all eight hours of it.

“Wait, what was that?”

Lena shook the sleep from her brain at Sam’s words. It was nearly three o’clock in the morning, and they were still pouring over the footage.

“What was what?” Lena asked.

“The blur,” Sam said. “Here, go back like thirty seconds.”

Sam clicked the rewind button and then played the footage again. Lena’s brow furrowed as she watched the video.

“Right there!” Sam shouted, but Lena just stared blankly at the screen. Sam huffed at her confusion. “Let me slow it down this time.”

Sam rewound the footage again, then slowed down the playback speed to half. This time, Lena saw what she was talking about, but even slowed down the image was barely more than a split-second blur.

“What is that?” Lena asked.

“That’s what I said!” Sam exclaimed.

They played back the footage again and again. Each time, all they could see was a dark blur on the screen, first at a distance, and then again in front of the camera. A moment later the camera caught the glare of the sun, and when the image returned everything looked completely normal.

“That’s weird, right?” Sam asked.

“I feel like we’re past weird at this point,” Lena replied. “Let’s watch the rest, it may have been nothing.”

“It was definitely _something_ ,” Sam muttered.

They made it through the rest of the footage, and it was just as uneventful as the first five hours. Finally they came to the conclusion that the only abnormality was the blur, and that that had to be what removed the fruit snacks.

“Do you think it was a bird?” Sam asked as Lena finished editing the footage for the class to watch on Monday.

“Birds aren’t that fast,” Lena replied.

“What about a plane?”

“Would’ve been bigger, much bigger,” Lena told her.

“Hmm…” Sam said, her tone a mixture of tired and thoughtful. “Oh! I know what it was!”

“What?” Lena asked, intrigued.

“Aliens.”

Lena snorted.

“Aliens stole your fruit snacks,” Sam declared. When Lena snorted yet again, Sam just shook her head. “What, do you have a better explanation?”

“I’m sure there are plenty more rational explanations than aliens, Samantha,” Lena said with a yawn. “I’m just too tired to think of any right now.”

“Well, if you figure it out, let me know, but until then, I’m saying that aliens stole your fruit snacks.”

Lena spent the next two days trying to form a rational explanation, but when she showed her class the video on Monday, she still had no idea what had caused the blur on the screen or what had made the fruit snacks fall off of the balloon. It didn’t help that the majority of her class had algebra with Sam before coming to her and already believed that aliens had stolen their fruit snacks. Trying to use the existing footage as an educational opportunity at that point was an absolute nightmare, even when Lena tried to bribe the kids with fruit snacks that had _not_ been in outer space.

Lena was content to forget about the incident afterward, but her students were not. One of her students recorded the blur from the footage on their phone and posted it on TikTok, and the video went viral. It became an even bigger story when news outlets realized that the student’s teacher was Lena _Luthor_ , disowned daughter of the notorious Luthor family. Suddenly Lena was fielding interviews from local and national news agencies and reporters who went from asking about aliens and fruit snacks to asking about how her family had disowned her after she came out as a lesbian.

It made for a massive headache, and it lasted for a good three weeks. About a month after the balloon’s initial launch, Lena was relieved that most of the attention seemed to have died down, until yet another reporter came to her classroom during her afternoon planning period.

She was elbow deep in potting soil, preparing an experiment on erosion, when a knock on her door drew her attention. Lena’s first thought was that perhaps the woman was a new teacher— they had been looking to hire someone in the English department for a month now— and with her khaki chinos and dark blue button-down, she certainly looked the part. But then Lena’s eyes fell on the badge clipped to the woman’s belt, not the school visitor badge, but the CatCo Media employee badge, and her face immediately fell into a frown.

“I’m afraid the aliens haven’t made any further contact,” she said bitterly. “And if you’re looking for a comment on my brother’s most recent weapons sales in the Middle East, I’m afraid my non-disclosure agreement with the company means I can’t comment. So if that’s all—“

“That’s not all,” the woman said quickly, hurrying forward. “I mean, that’s not why I’m here at all. I just, um…”

She paused and raised one hand to readjust her glasses. Lena sat back from her desk and took a moment to study the woman. She was tall, and clearly well-built with broad shoulders beneath her blouse. Her blonde hair was swept back into a curled ponytail, and blue eyes sparkled shyly behind a pair of thick-framed glasses. She didn’t have a notepad with her, or a recorder, but in one hand she was carrying a grocery bag, the contents of which Lena couldn’t quite make out. Something about her seemed oddly familiar to Lena, but she couldn’t quite place why.

“Who are you, exactly?” Lena asked.

“Oh, I’m Kara, Kara Danvers,” she replied, stepping forward and wiping her palm hastily on her pant leg before holding it out toward Lena. Lena shook her hand tentatively, and was a bit surprised by the strong grip from the seemingly timid woman.

“Well, Kara Danvers, if you’re not here for an interview, then what brings a reporter to my classroom?” Lena asked.

“Oh, I’m not a reporter!” Kara exclaimed. “Well, um, not exactly. And I, um, I’m definitely not here as one. I’m here to return your fruit snacks. Or, well, rather, replace them.”

With that, the woman hefted the grocery bag in her hand onto the corner of Lena’s desk, and now Lena could make out two boxes of the exact brand of fruit snacks she had taped to the weather balloon a month earlier.

“Well that’s… That’s very kind of you, but you didn’t have to do that,” Lena sputtered. “It’s not like you’re the one who took mine off of the weather balloon.”

Kara bit her lip shyly for a moment, then sighed. “Actually… I am.”

Lena’s mouth fell open in question, but before she could formulate any words Kara pulled her glasses from her face and unfastened the top two buttons of her blouse, revealing a familiar S-shaped sigil underneath.

“ _Supergirl!_ ” Lena exclaimed softly. “My god… Are you…? Why are you…? I’m a _Luthor_?”

Kara— or, rather, _Supergirl_ — rolled her eyes. “I did my research on you, Lena Luthor, and from what I can gather, you’re nothing like your family. And how else was I going to explain how I ate your fruit snacks at ninety-thousand feet above sea level?”

“You ate them?” Lena asked.

Kara looked down sheepishly. “Yeah, I, um… alien metabolism, ya know? I was so hungry flying back into the city, and when I saw those fruit snacks on the weather balloon… Well, my stomach kind of did the thinking for me.”

Lena stared at her for a long moment before she finally barked out a laugh. “Oh my god. _Oh my god!_ An alien really _did_ steal my fruit snacks.”

“In my defense, they’re my favorite kind!” Kara exclaimed. She nudged the bag toward Lena across the desk. “So, um, I hope these can pay you back. And just so you know, I flew these up to like a hundred thousand feet, so you can tell your students that these have been in space, too.”

Lena bit her lip. “You know, I could do that. Or… Supergirl could tell them herself?”

Kara’s face lit up. “Really?”

“You really think a bunch of sarcastic teenagers are going to believe me when I tell them that Supergirl stole their fruit snacks?” Lena asked.

And that’s how Lena ended up perched behind her desk the following morning, listening as Supergirl explained the events leading up to her stealing the fruit snacks to her class.

“I was flying back to National City from helping Superman fight an Infernian in Metropolis,” Supergirl explained. “I had missed breakfast, and that fight took a lot of my energy. I burn around twenty thousand calories on days when I use my powers a lot, so I need fuel. I was almost home, thinking about ordering my favorite potstickers, when I saw your balloon. As soon as I saw the label on the fruit snacks, my stomach started growling so loudly that they could probably hear it in Gotham. Before I could stop myself, I tore off the tape and started eating the candy. Then I realized that I had stolen something, and I needed to make it right with whoever had sent up the balloon.”

“I still can’t believe Supergirl stole our snacks,” a boy named Kyle muttered.

“ _Borrowed_ , technically,” Supergirl said with a cringe. “Not everyone’s perfect, not even superheroes. Sometimes _especially_ not superheroes. I’d say we’re all human but, uh… Not exactly. But you get the point.”

“So, like, can you really shoot laser beams out of your eyes?” a girl named Megan asked.

“Well, it’s not exactly lasers,” Supergirl replied. “We call them optic blasts.”

So began the unofficial Q and A session between her students and Supergirl. Lena was impressed as Kara fielded all sorts of questions from the teenagers, from asking about her powers and the villains she fought on a regular basis, to asking about her memories of her home planet and some questions that were even more personal than that.

“Do you have a husband?” Cindy asked, then immediately flushed red with embarrassment.

For her part, Supergirl blushed almost as brightly as the teenager. “Oh, no, I’m not married.”

“A boyfriend?” Aidan the football player asked from the back.

“No, no, I’m single,” Kara replied. Then her eyes fell on Lena’s desk, specifically on the small rainbow flag stuck in the cup of writing utensils, and the _Ask me about the Queer-Straight Alliance Club_ poster on the wall behind Lena’s desk. “But, um, I wouldn’t mind having a girlfriend.”

A small chorus of _Oh_ s rang out in realization from the class as Kara met Lena’s gaze and they both looked away quickly. Lena could feel her own blush creeping up on her cheeks.

“Oh my gosh, you should totally ask Miss Luthor out!” Aidan exclaimed.

Before either of them could reply, the bell rang to signal the changing of classes.

“Don’t forget your worksheet on chapter seven is due tomorrow, and you need to bring in a water sample from near your house so next week we can do our experiment on pH levels,” Lena announced as the students filed out. She straightened a chair before turning back to her guest. “Well, I think that went well.”

“You think so?” Supergirl asked.

“Oh, definitely, they’ll be talking about this for weeks,” Lena replied. “You handled their questions really well, too.”

“Yeah, well, I have teenage cousins who are a lot like them,” Kara told her. “And by like them, I mean nosey.”

Lena chuckled. “Well, I’m sorry if they crossed any boundaries.”

“No, they were fine.” Supergirl shifted from one foot to the other, and her boots squeaked slightly. She opened her mouth to speak again, but before she could her stomach growled loudly.

“Oh, wow, you weren’t kidding,” Lena said with a giggle.

“What can I say, alien metabolism,” Kara said sheepishly. “Do you, um… Do you have any more classes?”

“No, that was my last one for the day,” Lena told her. “Why? What did you have in mind?”

“Well, um, I was wondering if, uh, you’d like to go to lunch with me?” Kara asked. “There’s this great restaurant right around the corner that has amazing appetizers and—“

“Sure.”

“— my sister and I go there all the time. Or there’s this burger place like a block away, and a pizza joint on the next corner. Or I can always fly somewhere and bring food back or—“

“Whatever you want is fine, Kara.”

Kara froze mid-sentence. “Oh.”

“Oh?” Lena asked.

“That was… You said yes.” Supergirl blushed.

“Of course I did,” Lena replied. “Who would say no to a lunch date with Supergirl.”

The superhero frowned. “Actually, uh… It’d be more of a date with Kara Danvers. Is that okay?”

Lena smiled as she realized the subtle difference between the two. “Yeah, that would definitely be okay. Might even be better, actually.”

Kara’s face brightened. “Really?”

“Really,” Lena nodded. “And this is a date, right?”

Kara blushed again. “If you want it to be.”

Lena smiled. “I definitely want it to be.”


End file.
